How many years old the oldest fossil is?

Fossils are the traces of plants, animals and some other organisms. They are found in rock formations. Fossils are categorizing by geological times they lived. Paleontology tries to find connections between fossils. Youngest fossils are from Holocene Epoch and oldest fossils are from Archaean Eon. How many years old the oldest fossil is?

The oldest fossil is 3.4 billion years old. They are from Archean Eon. Archean Eon is lived during 3800-2500 million years ago. Main fossils from Archean Eon era are cyanobacterial mats. Also there are some bacterial fossils and microfossils.

Oldest fossils are found in Strelley Pool rock formation, Western Australia. They were microfossils and founded in sandstone. It’s believed thar 3.4 million years ago some islands started to be seen on the surface of ocean. At this era, Moon was creating high tides and the atmosphere was mostly methane. Found microfossils are cell-like structures.

The oldest fossils found before these ones are was in 1993. Paleobiologist J. W. Schopf found these fossils 20 miles away from oldest fossils of today. But found new fossils are 65 million years older than J. W. Schopf’s ones.

There are still some controversies about oldest fossils. Some scientists believe that rocks cooked fossils older than 3.5 million years old it’s not possible to find older than that ones. But some scientists believe that some chemical traces can be discoverable from these fossils still. Also some scientists say this fossils are still need to be proved.